Obsession (36 page)

Fortunately, not only was she found before any physical harm came to her, her alleged abductor crossed state lines, meaning he now faces a federal kidnapping charge as well as state charges both of kidnapping and first-degree assault. The federal charge alone could land him a life sentence. This may sound harsh to some who would feel sympathy for the confused young man; even the victim’s own mother told the
Washington Post
, “He’s a victim of society. We’re talking about a sick young man who needs help and hasn’t gotten it. Now he’s going to spend maybe the rest of his life in jail.” But one thing we have learned is that many obsessive personality types don’t lose interest, and they pose an ever-growing threat to the objects of their obsessions. Some victims have been stalked by the same offender for decades. The stalker may focus his attention on someone new (which solves the original victim’s problem but means a life of terror and uncertainty for the new target), or he may die, but he rarely gives up the obsessive behavior altogether—particularly when he’s gone as far as abducting a victim. Behavior based on fantasy—regardless of the type of crime in which it manifests itself—has an over-whelming tendency to escalate rather than wind down.

Even today, with new laws in place and greater public awareness, we still have difficulty dealing with the crime, in large measure because we’re talking about a crime that is defined by often subtle actions on the part of the offender and is often only witnessed by
the victim. Sometimes there are obvious warning signs: a series of threatening letters or messages left on an answering machine tape. Other times there may be no overt clues that a crime has occurred. Unlike other categories of crime, with stalking we find no money missing from a purse, no fingerprints on the steering wheel of a stolen car, and (in the cases that turn out well) no dead body at a crime scene. A stalker’s weapons of choice can be items normally not considered menacing, such as a phone that rings too often, or gifts left on a doorstep or office desk. But as we see, these can be just the prelude to a harrowing future moment when more traditional weapons (guns, knives) will be employed.

Particularly frightening and confusing for the stalking victim is that she often recognizes that something is not right long before those around her, sometimes including law enforcement. David Beatty, an attorney with extensive legislative experience who is acting executive director of the National Victim Center, points out that even though the legal definitions of stalking vary from state to state, one thing that remains constant in the experience of victims is that “stalking begins
before
the legal definition kicks in…. You can be harassing and you can be threatening before your actions reach the level of the legal definition.” What’s so bad about having an admirer, secret or otherwise, leaving gifts for you? How can you really expect the police to consider a bouquet of roses with a love note attached threatening?

What antistalking groups, many of which are founded by former and current victims of stalkers, emphasize is that a pattern of this unwanted and unwarranted behavior does create fear and stress in the recipient, who realizes both that it is not normal, socially acceptable behavior in its context, and that it can be a precursor to violence. Acts and words that
seem harmless today may turn lethal down the road, which is a message that is only just now starting to be heard and understood.

Like acquaintance rape, stalking is also disturbing because we like to believe we can pick dangerous people out in a crowd: we can recognize the bad guys and steer clear and we’ll be safe. But by their very nature and success, sexual predators often look just like us; they don’t look like ogres. Unfortunately, in some ways it is harder to develop a general profile of a stalker than it is a rapist or murderer. They can come from any background, any walk of life, and their behavior can accelerate from seemingly “normal” to deadly quickly. The majority of stalkers are men, and in most cases (75 to 80 percent, according to the National Victim Center), a male offender stalks a female victim. Most stalkers are in their late teens and early twenties, up to their forties, and of above average intelligence. It will come as no surprise that they are typically lonely people, often socially withdrawn, and may have a closer relationship with their television set (providing a rich source for their fantasy life) than with other human beings. Some have never had a close personal relationship, never had sex, and have no immediate prospects of either.

The generic profile elements stop there, however, and you can see that it’s not all that limiting or illuminating a description. Part of the reason it’s difficult to assign characteristics to stalkers is that this is still such a newly defined crime category with much research yet to be done. But it is also because stalkers really do run the gamut from the clinically psychotic to otherwise fully functioning, successful, and well-respected members of our communities. As with other crimes, their choice of victim—from a famous celebrity who doesn’t even know they exist to a former lover—and the different types of stalking behavior they engage in
give us clues as to what sort of individual we’re dealing with in a given case. And although specific behaviors and characteristics exhibited by stalkers vary widely, we start out by placing them into one of two broad categories: so-called love-obsession stalkers, whose victims are people they don’t really know, and simple obsession stalkers, who focus their attention on people they know and with whom they might have had a previous relationship, rather than on complete strangers. Since simple obsession stalking is so closely tied to issues of domestic violence, we’ll deal with that crime separately in the next chapter.

The love-obsession variety are what most people think of upon hearing the word
stalker
, since their cases often get the sensational press coverage. This type fixates on a celebrity, although they have been known to develop obsessions with ordinary, nonfamous people as well, perhaps a teller at the bank, a favorite waitress, a coworker, or simply someone who smiled as they walked by in the mall. The key is that the victim has no real relationship with the stalker; they could be casual acquaintances or not have met at all. And just as a movie star or popular singer has done nothing to invite this person into his or her personal life, all you have to do to become the object of a love-obsession stalker is be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

With the obsessions I “must” maintain in my work, I try not to obsess about the safety of my loved ones, yet, I have to tell you, stalking poses a threat that I find deeply disturbing. We all caution our kids from a tender age against perverts and various types of strangers, but this is a crime that, I admit, is difficult to protect them from or adequately explain, even as adults. My daughters are both young women now—old enough and with good enough judgment that I don’t have to be concerned they’ll get in a car with a
man they don’t know or put themselves in other obviously vulnerable situations. But I’m almost tempted to advise them against being true to their warm and friendly natures: Don’t talk to that man behind you in the supermarket line. Don’t say, “Excuse me,” and smile at that guy you bumped into on your way to the bathroom at the movies; maybe you’re the only woman who’s paid any attention to him his whole life. One misplaced smile could be enough for someone to start building an entire fantasy world around you. Because for this type of offender, that—or even less—may be all he needs. Park Dietz has described the first case of this nature he dealt with, “a man who was launched on a mission by a waitress who served him a cup of coffee…. Obviously not the sort of thing you can guard against.”

What’s perhaps even more chilling is that some of these offenders are so inadequate that they build their fantasies around children. I’ve seen cases where a young man in his late teens or early twenties fixates on a little girl who lives on his block, watching her from a parked car as she waits for the school bus, approaching her to talk as she rides her bicycle, leaving notes for her, even scolding or berating her if he catches her talking to a little boy. As hard as it is for an adult woman to deal with the strain and fear of a stalking experience, it is even more devastating for a child who not only doesn’t understand why this is happening to her but may get to the point where she doesn’t remember what it’s like not to live in fear that “the bad man” is going to get her.

As with other types of crime, I believe different stalkers act out differently depending on their motivation, or as David Beatty puts it, depending on where their wiring went bad. Experts may assign their own labels to the different types, as we saw with the rapist typologies, but all tend to break them down into the
same general groupings, and all are related to motivation and behavior.

Behavior reflects personality.

Gavin de Becker, who founded his own security firm in the Los Angeles area, is one of the leading experts on threat assessment and stalking; he has often worked with us in the Investigative Support Unit. Not only does he have extensive experience with his own clients, he’s done the hard research to back what he says. He has developed impressive computer models to evaluate the seriousness and dangerousness of various threat situations. Gavin uses motivation as a way to categorize different types of stalkers who pursue celebrities.

“Attachment seekers” are motivated by the desire to form a relationship with the individual they stalk. “Identity seekers” are looking for fame themselves, and the recognition they can attain through their acts. “Rejection based” stalkers may be attachment seekers gone bad, stalkers who are looking either for revenge for their perceived rejection by the celebrity or to change the star’s mind about them. These are the most dangerous type, more likely than the others to harm or kill their prey. Finally, “delusion based” stalkers think there is a force (sometimes God) leading them to fulfill some mission. These are the hardest to treat and the least predictable.

Park Dietz similarly describes the different types of so-called romantic stalkers. Of those who obsess about people they don’t know—including celebrity stalkers—Park states that they range from the truly delusional to those who become pathologically dependent on a love object who would never be interested in them—someone completely unattainable.

Though delusional stalkers represent the majority of those who pursue the rich and famous (estimates go as high as 90 percent), they are in the minority (between one-fifth and one-quarter) of all stalking
cases. This is good news for the average citizen who might be stalked someday, but bad news for celebrities because these pursuers can be highly unpredictable and dangerous. They often suffer from some mental disorder, such as schizophrenia, paranoia, and/or erotomania, a psychiatric condition wherein the stalker actually believes the object of his obsession returns the desire and wants to pursue the relationship. Their mental illness also makes them difficult to treat or rehabilitate. Think of David Letterman’s stalker: in her mind, she was his wife and had good reason to move into his home and drive his car.

Socially inadequate and often incapable of forming personal relationships in the real world, many stalkers create a fantasy life with their love object. They script it out and expect the other person (who may be completely unaware that the stalker exists until some form of contact is made) to act accordingly.

The love-obsession stalkers who are not delusional nonetheless operate with a heavy dose of fantasy as well. For a man who believes that some woman is his destiny, who sees the two of them as halves of the same whole, incomplete without each other, the fantasy relationship is critical to his sense of self. He likely doesn’t have much in the way of self-image, particularly if he’s lacking other relationships in his life. If he’s someone whose neighbors would describe as a loner or a loser, who doesn’t seem to have any friends, he’s going to invest heavily in his relationship with this woman—his victim. It may take years for him to adequately prove his love and win her over (or wear her down), but someday, he is confident, she will be glad he kept trying. Rather than taking rejection as a sign he should leave her alone and move on with his life, he sees this as an indication that he has to step up his efforts.

To some degree, this belief is supported by messages
he gets from movies and television. Think of all the movies in which boy meets girl, boy pursues girl, girl rejects boy, boy persists and eventually triumphs, and they presumably live happily ever after. In some ways, this type of stalking is another criminal symptom of a society that doesn’t get the message that when a woman says no, she means no.

The danger develops in many cases when the stalker does not get what he wants from the victim. Desperate for the relationship of his dreams, if the object of his affection does not respond positively, the offender may turn to intimidation and threatening behavior to get the response he seeks. Failing this, he may turn to violence.

For some, the violence is simply an acting out of their frustration, while others make the conscious decision that if they cannot have the positive relationship they want, they would rather have negative attention than none at all. David Beatty describes how one action, and its corresponding frustration, leads to the next. Take the example he gives of a stalker who calls his victim every hour on the hour to ask for a date. Beatty notes that anyone “could reasonably believe that that behavior is so erratic—it is so inappropriate—that it is dangerous. If someone’s willing to go that far, if someone cannot take no for an answer, they are on a spiraling track to the next act.” In the offender’s mind, says Beatty, “If you care about me … because you fear me, that’s still care…. I’m having an impact on someone who is larger-than-life for me.”

The larger-than-life persona of the victim may be a projection of the stalker’s own inadequacy, as in the case of a man who stalks a coworker, or it can be a function of the victim’s fame. In some cases, as much as he desires a relationship with his victim, the stalker is driven more by the celebrity of the victim and his
need to tap into greatness and importance so lacking in his own life. As Gavin de Becker observes, “We’ve seen many people seek to prove their love through public acts of violence. When all else failed to give them the identity they hoped a relationship would bring, the handgun would be sure to do it.” This was the motivation behind most of the early public-figure stalking cases, from obsessed fans of celebrities to political assassins.